On June 30, Barack Obama gives a speech in
Independence, Missouri, proclaiming his "deep and abiding love for this
country," and daring anyone to question his patriotism.

The July 7 issue of Time Magazine
has a cover story ("The New Patriotism") asserting, "no
matter how they define patriotism, Americans should tremble before insisting
that any fellow citizen lacks it." If the mainstream media got
talking-points from the Democratic National Committee, they could hardly be more
on-message.

The Time story was written by
Richard Stengel, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. Taking
instruction on patriotism from Time and the CFR is like getting
lessons in decorum from Madonna or hearing a sobriety lecture by Lindsay Lohan.

Among other fanciful interpretations of
electoral history, Stengel writes that Nixon was reelected in 1972 because his
cabinet wore American flag lapel pins and McGovern's entourage did not.
Couldn't have anything to do with the fact that the New Left icon ran on a
platform of socialism at home and surrender in Vietnam, could it?

The CFR fellow also thinks Mike Dukakis lost
in 1988 because, as governor of Massachusetts, he had refused to sign a bill
requiring teachers to lead students in the Pledge of Allegiance. Defending
furloughs for rapists and murders apparently had nothing to do with Dukakis'
defeat that year -- any more than his freezing like a deer in the headlights
when asked if he'd still oppose capital punishment if his wife was raped and
murdered.

It's all about the refusal of noble Democrats
to wrap themselves in the flag, while crass, opportunistic Republicans act like
George M. Cohan at a 4th of July picnic, according to Time.

The essay also informed us, "American
patriotism wears two faces: a patriotism of affirmation, which appeals more to
conservatives, and a patriotism of dissent, particularly cherished by
liberals."

I don't know any true patriot who questions
the right of Americans to dissent on any issue, whether we agree with them or
not.

The Left's patriotism-deficit has less to do
with dissent than a very real and ingrained hostility toward America.

Its recitation of our national saga runs from
slavery to Wounded Knee, to the wartime internment of Japanese Americans, to
segregation to My Lai and Abu Ghraib -- excluding everything else. Liberals
love America; they just can't find anything positive to say about it, other
than Susan B. Anthony and Rosa Parks.

The article also discloses, "The American
who volunteers to fight in Iraq and the American who protests the war both
express a truer patriotism than the American who treats it as a distant
spectacle with no claim on his talents or conscience."

This is a truly weird moral equivalency --
one which equates the young Marine who loses a limb in a Baghdad bombing with
the moron Marxist who claims the Marines are the equivalent of the Waffen S.S.
and the Iraq war is really about "blood for oil."

In trying to rationalize how the Left can
hate our history and heritage while still claiming the mantle of
patriotism, Stengel explains: "For liberals, America is less a common
culture than a set of ideals about democracy, equality and the rule of law."
Toward the end of his Independence speech, Obama informed us: "Patriotism
is always more than just loyalty to a place on a map or a certain kind of
people. Instead, it is loyalty to America's idea...."

In other words, the Left's loyalty isn't to
America as it is, but to an ideal America reflected in certain principles. The
problem with this proposition is that leftists have betrayed both America and
the ideals on which it was founded.

"Democracy"? The Left stands for
the rule of judges, not representative government. What's democratic about
Obama insisting that the people of California should not have a vote on
marriage -- that instead the definition should be determined by the one-vote
majority of an unelected body?

How do you reconcile "equality before
the law" with racial quotas or affirmative action? Martin Luther King
believed a man should be judged by the content of his character, not the color
of his skin. The Left believes in privileges based on race, gender, ethnicity
or, increasingly, what it calls sexual orientation.

What could be more American than the freedom
to speak one's mind, especially in a political context?

Liberals will defend to the death your right
to agree with them. When it comes to dissent from political correctness, they
are censors nonpareil. The Left controls higher education more completely than
any other aspect of American life. Not only is anti-Americanism rampant on the
college campus, so too is a uniformity of opinion enforced with an iron hand.

Campus speech codes are based on the fascist
notion that the expression of certain ideas must be punished. A recent example
of the academic totalitarian mindset was the firing of an African-American
administrator at the University of Toledo for writing a letter to the editor
objecting to homosexuals being compared to blacks.

The left believes in a "patriotism of
dissent" for itself, and itself alone -- not on the college campus, not in
front of an abortion clinic (which, thanks to the likes of Ted Kennedy, are
insulated from protest by speech-suppression, buffer zones), and definitely not
when the opinions expressed are alleged to be offensive to certain minorities.
Hate crimes laws are the left's most daring adventure in censorship.

Before Time was gracious enough
to explain patriotism to those of us who cling to our guns or religion or
anti-(illegal) immigrant sentiment when we feel bitter, Barack Obama put on his
own star-spangled extravaganza.

At the Independence rally, standing in front
of not one but four American flags, lapel pin firmly in place, hand over heart
-- all that was missing was John Philip Sousa and the Mormon Tabernacle Choir
-- Barack Hussein Obama "tried to reassure voters about his
patriotism" (in the words of ABC News).

When was the last time a presidential
candidate had to reassure voters that he actually liked his country? Do you
wonder, then, that the Democrats consider patriotism Obama's Achilles heel?

Just because he refused to wear an American
flag lapel pin last year, just because he wouldn't hold his hand anywhere near his
heart while the National Anthem played, just because Frau Obama suggested that
she never had a reason to feel pride in America until her husband's
presidential campaign, just because his minister of 20 years regularly reviled
the United States from the pulpit, is that any reason to question Obama's
patriotism? That's a rhetorical question.

"At certain times over the last 16
months, I have found, for the first time, my patriotism challenged," Obama
disclosed to gasps of astonished outrage from the audience.

But he wasn't about to take it in a supine
position. "I will never question the patriotism of others in this
campaign," the Democrat promised. "And I will not stand idly by when
others question mine." Yeah, like anybody's going to question the patriotism
of the candidate with the crippled arm, the result of six years of torture as a
POW.

Obama went further, charging that the
"question of who is -- or is not -- a patriot all too often poisons our
political debate" -- the flag-waving equivalent of the politics of
personal destruction.

You can see why left-wingers get antsy when the
discussion turns to love of country.

Treason permeates the Left. Its bastions --
Hollywood, academia, the establishment media and the mainline churches -- are
nests of treason.

In a world where America fights for its
survival against a jihadist threat dedicated to ushering in a new Dark Ages --
in an era when 3,000 Americans died in the bloodiest attack on the continental
U.S., another 4,000 died in Iraq and more than 30,000 were wounded in that
conflict -- it's not hard to see why the left is frantic to avoid a candid
discussion of patriotism.

Well, permit me to inject a
bit of what Obama calls poison into our political debate. Start trembling,
Richard Stengel, I'm about to suggest that some of my fellow citizens are
lacking in patriotic ardor.

Filmmaker Michael Moore, ayatollah of the anti-American documentary,
who compares the Iraqi terrorists to the Minutemen, is less than patriotic.
Moore has devoted his career to depicting America as a nation of gun nuts and
greedy bastards.

Cindy (Bush-killed-my-son) Sheehan, who claims "America has been
killing people on this continent since it was started. This country is not
worth dying for," will never be mistaken for Betsy Ross.

Columbia Professor Nicholas De Genova told a 2003 teach-in: "U.S.
flags are the emblem of the invading war machine in Iraq today. ... The only
true heroes are those who find ways to defeat the U.S. military." De
Genova, who also called for "a million Mogadishus" (in reference to
the 1993 Somali ambush, where 18 American soldiers died), doesn't wear a flag
lapel pin -- unless it's the flag of Cuba or North Korea.

Ersatz American Indian Ward Churchill, formerly a professor at the
University of Colorado, called the Americans who died on 9/11 "little
Eichmanns," and says he doesn't just want the U.S. out of the Persian
Gulf, but "out of North America" and "off the
planet." Sorry, Stengel and Senator, but I gotta go out on a limb here
and question this guy's patriotism -- not to mention his sanity.

Speaking of the inhabitants of another planet, in January, the City
Council of Berkeley, California (liberalism's home town) resolved that the
Marines weren't welcome in the city limits, said that the good people of
Berkeley should shun Marine Corps recruiters like other "violent
influences" and called on anti-war elements like Code Pink to disrupt the
work of recruiting offices. Can anyone call this patriotic dissent, with a
straight face?

What does any of this have to do with newly
minted super-patriot George Lincoln Obama? Look homeward, Hussein.

On May 25, Father Michael Pfleger preached a
sermon at Chicago's Trinity United Church in Christ (Barack's house of worship
for 19 years), in which he earnestly declared, "I also believe that
America is the greatest sin against God." Now, how exactly is calling
America a "sin against God" an expression of your love for this
country?

Pfleger also believes "America has been
raping people of color" throughout our history. Am I wrong, or is rape not
a good thing?

Obama and Pfleger have been friends since the
late 1980s. Between 1995 and 2001, Pfleger contributed a total of $1,500 to
various Obama campaigns. As a senator, Obama directed $225,000 in grants to
Pfleger's Chicago church, St. Sabina. Like Jeremiah Wright, Obama's pastor for
almost 20 years, Pfleger has a crush on Minister Louis Farrakhan. He calls the
Nazi of Islam leader "a prophetic voice" and a "mentor."

But when it comes to hating America,
Pfleger can't hold a candle to the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright, Jr., the man Obama
formerly described as "like an uncle to me" (the kind of uncle
families used to keep locked in the attic).

Wright refers to America as the "U.S. of
K.K.K," says "America is the No. 1 killer in the world," claims
the U.S. government invented the AIDS virus as a "means of genocide
against people of color," and urged parishioners to say "God damn
America."

Of course, Barack O-Baloney would have us
believe that he sat in a pew of the Trinity United Church of Christ for two
decades and never heard a word of Wright's acid anti-Americanism. After World
War II, there were probably Germans who claimed they never heard Hitler say
anything bad about Jews at a Nuremberg rally.

Patriotism is one of those concepts that's
difficult to define in 25 words or less.

But I can tell you what it's not. It's not
"America has been killing people on this continent since it was
started." It's not "The only true heroes are those who find ways to
defeat the U.S. military." It's not "America is the greatest sin
against God." It's not "America is the No. 1 killer in the
world" and "God damn America."

Given the company Obama has been keeping, I'm
surprised Jane Fonda (another profile in the "patriotism of dissent")
didn't join him at his Independence rally. The Hollywood traitor did endorse
the senator before the Georgia primary.

Coincidentally, in 1972, while Hanoi Jane was
posing with a North Vietnamese anti-aircraft battery, John McCain was being
tortured in the same city. (Fonda later said returning POWs who told us of
torture at communist hands were liars.) Or aren't we allowed to question her
"patriotism" either?

This column originally appeared on GrassTopsUSA.comand appears here with the author's permission.

Don Feder is a former Boston Herald writer who is now a political/communications consultant. He also maintains his own website, DonFeder.com.

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